L'Ombre Des Mervelles

What a gorgeous bottle! And a great representation of the scent inside. Aptly named, too. L'Ombre does what Alkemia The Traveler and the Moon does on my skin, where it's soft volume of scent billows off of my skin only to disappear and reappear unexpectedly the entire day. By this I do not mean it has low sillage or throw or makes me nose blind, it just does not register as a perfume and it de- and rematerializes in my conscious perception rather than acting as ever present background music. Like a mirage! But L'Ombre still stays with me for many hours. The scent itself is tranquil and cool, again reminding me of the serene, cool airy character of Traveler and the Moon without actually smelling identical. I get a lot of the same gauzy effervescent amber-woods familiar across the Merveilles line. However, instead of being warm and sparkly, L'Ombre feels more like a cool breeze. The tea is present but lacks the bitterness I usually detect in tea fragrance. It's not sweetened, just very smooth. I can't detect any incense smoke either, just placid resins that echo LAmbre, although again stripped of any warmth. There's something about L'Ombre that smells like fresh outside air without having any obvious conifer or petrichor notes. It really does paint a picture of peaceful stargazing! It has a unisex/niche but easily wearable quality that Hermes sometimes has. It's not the most loved of the Merveilles family by the community, but I think it is a quiet masterpiece.

I like this flanker more than the L'ambre flanker I tested. Why? Because this one is much more interesting and not as linear. When you first spray L'ombre it is very tea focused. A very smoky rich tea. It catches your attention right away. As that susides the salty smell of ocean waves comes crashing through blending with the smoky tea. You spent the night on the beach and burned driftwood in the morning to heat tea. As that dies down this becomes a fig fragrance. It smells like a fig shampoo and reminds me of the fig that is in Phlur Father Figure, just no iris etc... but the fig note is the same. Smoky tea, ocean breezes and figs. I even get kinds of a fig shampoo vibe here. I like this a lot but not for me. I find this quite masculine, probably because of the ocean notes. My husband likes this as well and he will wear the sample. Unisex. But leans male for my taste.

Sometimes when writing fragrance reviews you need to understate things so you don't come across as a addled fanboy with a crush for whom everything is a "masterpiece" whilst you assign God-like status to the perfumer concerned. The problem with that is that when something truly rocks your world it can be hard to express it without coming across over-effuse or even obsequious. All the more so when the fragrance concerned isnt especially highly rated or generally considered to be any of the adjectives you have bubbling up in your brain like an aquifer when you smell it.

Whenever I have time to kill in an airport, I try to sniff some unfamiliar things at the Duty Free, and this was the standout from my last trip. I had the original EdM years ago but sold it b/c it didn’t really suit me. This is a great riff on that theme, darker, maybe a little more “masculine” and to my nose, a little more contemporary (which could be good or bad depending on what you like). There seems to be a ton of bottles out there at very good prices, so I wouldn’t spend full retail at the Duty Free, but it’s a terrific snag for half that.

I think the fact that for this 2020 creation they created a lopsided version of the 2010 Van Cleef and Arpels bottle for "Midnight in Paris" is maybe a hint this is supposed to appeal to fans of the "Midnight in Paris" scent. This is certainly a bargain (I paid $59) compared to the eBay scalpers charging $250-550 for remaining bottles of Midnight. I really enjoy this scent more than I was expecting. I think it's good for business or pleasure and a scent I'll be ordering backup bottles of. One of the best incense scents I've found.